What does IT Support do for businesses?
As a business owner or leader, IT Support is one of the many tools that you can use to help you run your business. It takes away the headache of managing your business’s IT requirements by allowing you to hand that over to experts – and by doing so, take one more thing off your extensive to-do list, freeing up more of your time and energy to focus on running your business.
IT Support is designed to match the needs and fill the gaps that your business has. The support provided to every business will be different, but may include elements such as:
Setting up new starters
A big headache for any business is managing the tech requirement for new starters (including hardware, licenses, access rights, and much more), especially if they are hybrid or work from home employees. IT Support will manage all of this for you, leaving you, and them, to just get on with the job.
Upgrades and IT best practice
Staying ahead of what is current best IT practice can be outsourced to your IT Support partners. They will be able to advise based on their knowledge of your business and their IT expertise.
Strategic growth
Expert consulting that can help you to plan how your IT will change as your business grows and how to adopt services such as AI (see latest post) to power that growth.
Fixing the printer
If an IT issue occurs – even what may seem like a minor one, such as the printer not printing – it can affect the productivity of your team. Your IT Support partner will be on call to resolve any issues for you – usually remotely and often within minutes.
In summary, IT Support is whatever you need it to be to remove the stress of managing your IT, whether that is a complete on-site IT team; advice, consultancy and support; or someone to fix printers and help you onboard new starters.
Real-world examples: how IT Support solves everyday problems
The best way to discuss the way IT Support can help your business is with examples from the support that ERGOS Technologies Limited offers to its existing clients.
Here, with any incriminating details changed, are some of the requests that have come in to our support team.
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“I’m having an issue with my OneDrive. It is not syncing with Sharepoint. I seem to be missing a lot folders.”
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“[our boss] is currently travelling in various countries and is having trouble accessing emails from his phone. I guess it could be because he has logged in from different countries in succession. He needs to access emails this morning, could you please call him on his mobile as soon as possible?”
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“Our accounts team is unable to access the login page on the below website. Can you please check what is causing this issue? This is urgent as we need access to the website to make some transactions as soon as possible.”
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“We need to decide whether the M365 archiving should be switched on for all users and what the retention policy is, i.e. anything older than 2 years is moved to the archive.”
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As you can see, IT Support covers immediate issues such as OneDrive synchronisation and websites not loading, but can also cover international support and setting business IT policies.
Types of IT Support (and which one is right for you?)
There are many different types of IT Support and the one you choose will be specific to you. However, when making the decision, there are some key aspects that you should consider:
- What is the response time?
It is important that your needs are prioritised and that you don’t need to waste time chasing people. When you raise a support ticket, you should be confident that it is being dealt with in good time.
- Can you get through on the phone (if you want to)?
If phone support is a key requirement for you, then you need to check that they offer it and it is efficiently managed.
- Can you contact by message?
You may not want to speak to anyone on the phone, but instead be able to contact the IT Support team via a Teams message. Not everyone can offer this, but if it’s important to you then will certainly be able to find IT Support that does.
- Do you need ‘boots on the ground’?
One thing that you may want to consider is having in-person support in your office, whether that’s to work on a specific project or as a long-term, strategic placement. If this is likely to be important to you, find IT Support that can offer it.
- Can they support your business growth?
If you’re planning global expansion, or think you might need a specific IT upgrade or integration, ensure you find IT Support that can both grow with you and help power your growth.
- Do they offer the right pricing structure?
Cost is always going to be an issue when making a business decision such as this, however, cost shouldn’t be the main driver, especially if cheap means they can’t support you in the way you need. Instead of bottom line price, look at how they structure their pricing and how confident they are in the services they offer you.
The signs your business is ready for IT Support
You and your team may be able to manage the day-to-day aspects of your IT, until you hit a certain tipping point. What that tipping is will be different for every business, but some of the most common ones are:
IT Support for business growth
A business that wants to scale will have IT requirements that start to multiply. Growth is one of the most frequent reasons for initiating IT Support or looking for new suppliers. Your IT will look very different from 20 employees to 50 employees and very different again with 250 employees – and that all changes again if your growth involves international offices or clients.
Ideally, your IT Support will not only help you once you have grown, but will also provide strategic advice on the best way to manage that growth.
Threat of cyber attacks
Recent headline news about cyber attacks to M&S and the Co-op in the UK have made many businesses, large and small, consider whether they are at risk.
Help with managing cybersecurity is one of the major reasons that businesses look for IT Support as keeping on top of the latest threats and managing best practice is better done by the experts.
IT upgrade projects
If you know that your IT needs to be overhauled and improved anyway, then this is a great time to consider IT Support. Not only will you get help with the upgrade itself, but you will also get strategic advice about the best way to upgrade and a team that will look after the ongoing management of the new set up.
You’re feeling stressed by your IT
No matter what the reason, if IT is causing you stress then you should look to outsource it as soon as possible. It is perfectly acceptable to not be an authority on the best IT practice while you are busy being an expert in your own field. However, effective management of IT does require expertise.
What are the benefits of good IT Support?
There are many benefits of IT Support, but they can nearly all be grouped into four main areas:
Increased IT knowledge
You tap into the expertise of people who have been doing this for years and have their fingers on the pulse of the latest updates and changes in the sector.
Increased productivity
By not having to manage the IT yourselves, you free up time and headspace to focus on other business priorities. IT Support will spot any potential problems that you may have and solve them for you before they impact on your productivity.
Cost savings
Problems cost money, as does having too much hardware or having the wrong hardware. Internal IT staff can also be expensive, especially when you need to hire experts or have 24/7 support. IT Support can actually save you money compared to all of these.
Peace of mind
When we talk about the benefits of outsourcing IT, we say “perhaps the greatest benefit of all is knowing your technology is in expert hands.” You get peace of mind and your IT gets looked after by experts.
Growing with you: how IT Support scales over time
Long-term growth should be a key consideration when choosing an IT Support partner. Planning for your own long-term growth is a key prompt for businesses in moving to outsourced IT Support, while whether the support itself can grow with you should be an important element in who you to choose to provide that support.
At ERGOS Technologies Limited, we pride ourselves on the long-term relationships we have with our customers and the ability we have to scale with them and their business. Whether that is because of the global reach of our IT Support business, or because we are always increasing our skills and capabilities (link to AI page).
How much does IT Support cost?
For any business service, cost needs to be a consideration, but the value you get for that cost is more important. IT Support is about saving you time and making your business more efficient, so costs should be compared to that. However, IT Support is usually charged on a per user model, with the range for professional IT Support being around £30 to £50 per user per month.
In terms of what is offered for that fee, we can only talk about the IT Support from ERGOS, but what we offer includes:
- Unlimited 24/7/365 automated monitoring, maintenance and fault remediation
- Unlimited remote support in office hours (Monday to Friday from 9am to 5:30pm)
- Cover for all existing infrastructure – with servers, desktops, laptops and tablets, switches, routers, firewalls, printers (excluding copiers) all covered under the ERGOS Essential Service
- Regular technology business reviews with a dedicated account manager. This ensures that we continually align your technology to the continually changing needs of your growing business
- Comprehensive monthly reporting – an interactive monthly systems and performance report keeping you up to date on key metrics
- An ADVANCED Service Level Agreement (SLA). We offer the highest level of service and response times.
IT Support FAQs
- What’s the most common issue the ERGOS IT support team deals with?
- The most common issues are usually something simple not working that is affecting productivity. The ticket raised is often along the lines of, “my IT is broken and I can’t work.”
- How long does it usually take to fix an IT issue?
- For issues like those above, they can be fixed within 30 minutes by an IT Support expert, meaning you can be back to work quickly and efficiently.
- What happens if I have an IT emergency outside working hours?
- The best IT Support providers offer 24/7 support. ERGOS offers 24/7/365 support, so you can contact us at any time.
- Do I still need IT support if I already have someone in-house?
- You may not need ongoing IT Support, but sometimes even the most experienced in-house person may benefit from some additional IT Consulting.
- What makes ERGOS different from other IT Support companies?
- We are so confident in our support that we offer six months of free IT support, with a six-month break clause, if you sign up to a three-year contract with us.
- Cybersecurity is at the heart of everything we do.
- We are accredited to ISO 27001, 9001, 14001 – putting us in the top 1% of all providers.
- Our experience, systems and resources are perfectly aligned to support transatlantic organisations.
- And if something goes wrong, our world class 30-minute SLA, ensures a speedy resolution with minimum disruption.
- How do you ensure our data stays secure?
- We are ISO 27001 compliant, which is the recognised international standard for information security management systems.
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See more about how the IT Support from ERGOS can work for your business.